At Jacob's Well

Water. It's my burden to fetch it, and Jacob's Well always feels so far away. I sighed, brushed back a lock of graying hair, and absentmindedly swatted at a trickle of sweat running down my cheek. The familiar cut of the water jar's leather strap burned into my shoulder.

Standing just inside the front door of our crumbling home, I could see midsummer heat waves rising from the parched ground, making our holy mountain, Gerizim, waver and sway. The sun beat straight down, the ugly sixth hour.

My outcast hour.

They called me Gavri'el once. It means "God is my strength." Even though I still believe, life has hardened. Now most days I am only Gavi, and only when someone wants something.

All the other women visited the well and brought water home in the evening's cool. I'd hear words like "harlot" and "cheap" whenever I'd interact with them.

They turned their backs on me. I hated them. But they were painfully right.

Yet my past clung like dried sweat to my skin, so I recited my psalm, the one I know King David wrote just for me.

"You, God, are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land where

there is no water." (Psalm 63:1)

"Itzhak, I'm going to the well."

His voice carried from the other room, where he lazed. "Come back to bed." He laughed. "Wait. Bring some bread from the village too, Gavi. The barley and basil loaves are tasty with this wine."

He belched long and hard. I could imagine the smell of sour wine and him. I didn't answer. After a few moments, his voice softened. "Please bring some bread, Gavri'el. Gavi. Honey. Please."

Please. The word hung in the fetid air.

I grunted and headed out into the heat. Buying bread and getting water from Jacob's Well would take two trips. Water first. I had friends, of a sort, in the marketplace.

Maybe, just maybe, Itzhak would change. He had called me honey. The word felt strangely tender. I hadn't heard such words in so long. Perhaps, I thought, maybe one day we could marry. But the heat dried up my dream as I walked.

My mind traced the paths of long-ago travelers: the scrape of sandals like mine over stone and sand, the grunts of Jacob's sons prying at limestone, until water shimmered and bubbled up from the hidden depths.

***

"Here. Dig here." Jacob, the patriarch's voice was light and playful.

"Dig here, my family. My tribe." He brushed away a rivulet of sweat and jabbed a gnarled finger down to a whitish-tan chunk of limestone in front of him.

They were in Samaria, in a green and alive meadow nestled between Mount Gerizim to the south and Mount Ebal to the north. In the distance, midsummer heat waves made the city of Shechem shimmer and dance.

"Make your first shovel cut underneath the rock shaped like a sheep's head, for many sheep will water here."

Reuben, the eldest of his twelve sons, stepped forward. "But Father, why here? Why not closer to Shechem? It's at least a mile and a half away."

Jacob crouched, running the soil through his fingers. "Ah, Reuben, feel this. It crumbles yet holds together. The ground drinks rain, which seeps down through many tiny cracks. Water waits below. Pooling where the earth has long gathered it."

He stood and groaned, knees cracking with the effort. "Just below us."

With a grunt, he muttered under his breath, "I'm getting old." He bent over again, pried up the sheep's head rock, and held it over his head for his family to see. A dusting of earth ran down his face into his eyes, and he blinked hard. Below the lifted rock, moist soil. "Our well goes here."

A husky woman's voice called from the crowd, "We will call it 'Jacob's Well.'"

A hot wind rose and swirled, flipping his cinnamon-and-gray beard up and back around his nose. He laughed. "Ah, a beard-flipping wind." He raised his hands to the heavens. Grinning from ear to ear, he shouted, "Thank you, Lord. From this place, good things will come for many."

***

My steps slowed, and my shoulders slumped in the blazing sunlight. My voice squeaked as the dry wind tried to steal my words. "One day at a time, one step at a time."

The sun dried my cheeks as I recited that psalm to Yahweh. "May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion."

I stumbled. "Please, God of Jacob, answer me. Deliver me. Send me someone from Zion."

The trek up the foot-worn path to Jacob's Well stretched on and on. My mind wandered, sometimes to prayer, other times to bitter thoughts I couldn't shake.

I could almost hear my mother's voice, reminding me of the future she had planned: a quiet life with a wealthy scribe, my every movement carefully measured. She had wanted me to marry into comfort.

But I had been daring. I had learned early how to turn heads, how to catch the eye of a man with little more than a glance. Stealing a kiss, a caress, an impassioned embrace became a game to me.

I fell hard for one, a daring, handsome lad from the mountains, who claimed he was a noble's son, soon to inherit a fortune. My parents didn't like him; my brothers said he was a fake. "We don't need to get married," he said. His lips, tickling my throat, were velvet and sensual. It was those warm, date-palm brown eyes that moved me to foolishness.

We ran away in the moonlight, our pulses racing, breaths coming fast, then faster.

I returned a week later, only to find the front door locked. Though light came from the windows, I pounded on the door till my fists bled.

Then the lights extinguished. I wailed in the darkness until our neighbors cursed and demanded that I leave.

***

We wandered for two years, each passing day blurred as his façade crumbled around us. I stopped believing him as money and food became scarce. He refused to work, as he still clung to the lie of being a wealthy noble's son.

I found work, first as a weaver, where my fingers became sliced then infected by needle-like slivers in uncarded wool. After that, a butcher relented to my pleas.

I lasted a day.

A kindly matron gave me work as a kitchen maid.

Then my starry-eyed lover started saying, "I can't do this any longer, Gavi; you expect too much from me." But I noticed him holding hands with an older, wealthy woman named Maya.

I woke up one morning alone.

***

I had the good fortune to marry a short, fat, garlicky man, whose charm was almost nonexistent. A dozen pockmarks dotted his face and neck, old scars from a sickness, and yet he adored me. Every evening, he'd sit behind me, his fingers smelling of garlic as they worked through my long chestnut hair. A hundred strokes. At first, I winced at the touch, but over time, I grew to welcome it; the rhythm of his fingers was almost soothing. Once, in the middle of counting, he stopped at seventy-three and said, "You know, Gavi, I don't think I've ever been this happy," and I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing, and he started counting again. My heart fluttered, and I made sure he saw my smile. I even came to enjoy kissing him, though the taste of garlic lingered in my mouth.

Then, one evening, he slipped from the seawall. The waves foamed around him like a violent chorus; his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, blood from the back of his head staining the rocks red.

***

Again, I found myself on the streets. Then I grew faint from my belly's gnawing ache. I resorted to walking dark streets to ward off starvation. A rough few moments brought coins for a meal and perhaps a few days' shelter from the storm.

I watched families with envious eyes. But as the seasons changed, my own dreams faded to dust.

***

And yet, here I was, walking alone to fetch water, staring at the same sky that had once seemed so full of promise.

Halfway up the path, I could see a dozen Jewish men, their long robes and striped shawls in stark contrast to our rougher, simpler dress, standing around the well's low limestone wall. Men of any background, be they Jew or Samaritan, never drew water. Then all but one left toward Shechem. Their eyes avoided mine; the closer I got, the tension grew.

I continued, but ignored the lone man there. If he wanted to shrivel up there alone in this heat, that was his decision. I just wanted to get back into the shade.

***

"Jacob, Father Jacob. We have struck water. At one hundred forty-nine feet." As soon as the cry rang out, a swarm of laughing men, women, and children gathered around the wellhead.

Above the hubbub, a man with a deep, rumbling voice spoke with glee. "I'm hungry. Will we have a feast in honor of everyone involved in the project?" Conversations faltered; a hush fell over the group. The patriarch made his way toward the shaft, peered down, and rose to his full height. With a grin, he threw his head back and shouted, "Feast!"

Then he raised his hands over his head to be heard, and shouted, "Indeed, we will. A magnificent feast. For a week." Cheers, then a mighty roar went up. He held up his hands again. "But let us first give thanks to the Almighty." The crowd hushed, heads bowed. He led the group in prayer, thanking God for his blessings on him and his tribe; his powerful words rolled over them like a river.

"This well will be a happy place, friends, a place where the water we bring up will slake our thirst, water our flocks, and bring about comfort for many. Praise be to our God, Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides, for meeting our needs."

The old man paused as tears welled up in closed eyes and ran into his beard. His lips moved, though no sound emerged. Finally, he opened his eyes and faced south, looking past Mount Gerizim and off into the distance. Reuben took his arm. "Father, were you talking with an angel?"

Jacob's voice, soft and tender, came after several moments. He cleared his throat and gestured toward the well. "From this place, many will drink and live. But one day, one will come who gives water from which many will drink…and live forever."

***

I approached the well from the opposite side of the Jew, Mount Gerizim framing him from behind. Our eyes met. I nodded and looked away. The man I saw appeared to be just ordinary, but then again, I thought I saw compassion.

I rolled away the wooden cover over the well and got busy tying my leather bucket to the rope. I ignored him. As I lowered it into the well, he cleared his throat and said, "Will you give me a drink?"

Shocked, I almost fell in. I sputtered, "You are a Jewish man, and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?"

The man sat forward and extended his hands out a little, palms up. "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

What was this man talking about? God? Living water? I clenched my shawl, deciding it was time to play dumb and be on my way fast.

His request was shocking on another level too, for drinking from my bucket and ladle would make him ceremonially unclean. "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?"

I lifted the bucket over the well's opening and poured its contents into my water pot. One more bucketful would make it brimming full. I released the coarse rope, and my bucket found the water below with a faint splash.

Again, I drew the hemp up hand over hand; it found a worn, familiar groove on the wellhead's mouth. My forearms burned with the effort. Almost there.

The man continued, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

I laughed without mirth. A spring of water welling up to eternal life? Was this man a prophet? Or was he a lunatic? Regardless, seeing that it was just Jewish him and Samaritan woman me here, enemies, I thought I needed to tread a bit more carefully. My fingers itched for a weapon I hadn't brought; I'd left it with the loaf at home.

I had to force the words out of my dry lips. "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." Wouldn't that be nice? If only that water could wash through me and somehow soothe my weary soul.

I poured the bucket into my clay pot and inserted the stopper into its mouth. Time to go.

He didn't want to end our conversation, for he said, "Go, call your husband and come back."

Edging away, I couldn't help myself. I answered with more than a touch of bitterness, "I have no husband."

"You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

I swallowed hard. What? Was this a trick? How in the world could this traveling nobody have known my stained past? No man could know, at least no ordinary man. The air between us felt impossibly taut. Blood roared in my ears. My knees wobbled. Neither of us should have been there. Was he a prophet?

I froze. How do I act? I tried to bend my knees to show respect, for I could hear memories of my mother's sharp words in my head. "Show him obeisance."

But I couldn't. My face flushed. I snapped back, just as harshly. "Just what does a Jewish prophet expect from a disgraced Samaritan woman, dear mother?"

I had to flee. The wind rose; a speck of dust stung his eyes, and for a moment, he rubbed them. Edging away, I said, "I can see you are a prophet."

Pointing to Mount Gerizim behind him, I said, "Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

The wind rose again, harder this time, fluttering my shawl. Our eyes met for an instant. I could see kindness. Love, even. I couldn't look away. My heart stilled, and I leaned forward a little to catch his every word.

"Woman, believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."

Salvation. Worshiping in the Spirit. I knew nothing about teachings past the Pentateuch, but I'd heard stories around the hearth.

"I know the Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

He shifted his weight, and our eyes met again. "I, the one speaking to you—I Am He."

***

He claims to be 'I AM,' the Messiah. And here I am, unclean in heart and deed.

I could not remain there. My heart pounded as I set my water pot down.

I ran, but the hot, dry desert air robbed my throat and lungs of moisture. I doubled over, coughing and gasping for breath. One of my sandals became untied, and I tripped, hitting my forehead on a lump of mud. Dazed.

His group of friends passed. They looked at me, past me. None offered help.

As my coughing slowed to a gentle wheezing, I prayed and asked Yahweh to reveal the man's identity to me. It didn't take long.

I continued into town, albeit at a slower pace, and stopped at the open-air market, where Itzhak's sisters, Adira and Iscah, were haggling over dried herbs at one of the stalls. When they spotted me, their faces lit up in smiles, eyes warm with a kindness I hadn't expected.

I described my encounter, and then a crowd gathered. Hostile faces quizzed me; many taunted. Some cursed. A small rock bounced off my ankle, and I yelped, but I stood straight, tall, chin lifted. I locked eyes with each questioner and refused to remain in my disreputable shame. When I had answered their questions, right in front of me, my harshest critic softened. His weathered face cracked like an ancient wineskin, and his smile revealed yellowed stubs and missing teeth as he nodded slowly. I could see tears welling up in Adira's eyes. Then her legs gave way, and she collapsed, sobbing. Iscah had to hold her up.

They wanted to meet the Messiah for themselves, so the townspeople traveled back to Jacob's Well. That evening, as long shadows stretched across the streets, Jews and Samaritans broke bread together. Conversations that used to erupt into arguments over minor details in olive oil pressing became laughter and exchanges lasting late into the night.

An old merchant I recognized from the market, a man who had once spat near my feet, stood apart from the crowd, shoulders shaking. One of Jesus's companions put a hand on his back and left it there. Farther along the road, a young woman I didn't know had her face buried in her mother's neck. A boy of about eight tugged his father's sleeve and pointed at the preacher, and his father kneeled down in the dust to be at eye level with him and whispered into his ear.

I saw Itzhak on the edge of the crowd. I smiled and beckoned him to join me, but he shook his head no and raised his bottle in a mock salute. Weeping softly for his loss, I turned away.

***

Later, I spoke in private with him who had told me about my life and much more. "You know who I am and what I've done."

"I do, Gavri'el."

He pointed out that I, too, could receive forgiveness.

At first, I was skeptical, for my life had been nothing but sinful up to that moment. Then he said, "Gavri'el, sin isn't bad because it's forbidden; it's forbidden because it's bad, and God wants us not to sin."

I knew that to be true, and for a long while I couldn't look him in the face. I wanted that forgiveness. My voice cracked as I gripped his sleeve. "Please, please take it all. Every part of it, I can't carry it anymore." I wept as I poured out my soul.

He held me, brushing away my tears. "I know who you were, daughter. Go and sin no more."

I stood on buoyant feet, aware of my lips taking in clean, cool, dry air, the distant, comforting sound of cheerful voices.

Two mornings passed in a haze of activity before Jesus and his disciples left Shechem, traveling southward. I watched them amble along the road and felt an insistent tug at my heart. After a moment, I hurried to my home and packed a small bag. Outside, I turned for one last look.

I could hear Itzhak's rumbling snores from within. I thought of him with his bottle salute; then he emerged, cradling a wineskin. "Stay home, Gavri'el. Please, Gavi."

Startled, I took a step backward. "No, I'm joining Jesus." He belched, took a long pull from the skin, and disappeared inside.

Then, to my surprise, a five-inch-long house gecko scurried across the doorpost. Its skin shimmered blue, as bright as the males I'd seen during mating season.

He cocked his head sideways, appraised me with his big reptilian eyes, and did some push-ups. I smiled, for geckos brought good luck. "Be on your way, little lizard."

He ran down the post, jumped off, then scampered through the front door, disappearing into the cool shadows of our house. "Good. Go find a girl gecko. Have a family. There are plenty of bugs to eat in there. Eat the big one named Itzhak, will you?"

I adjusted my pack, its leather strap familiar and welcome. I picked up my pace to join Jesus and his disciples, who had seen me break away from the townspeople and were waiting.

Behind me, up the hill, Jacob's Well stood in the heat.
For generations, people had come to draw from it only to go away thirsty again.

I would not.

The End